Ex-manager Rambo termed arrogant, but defended as well

WEST CHESTER — Carrie Pike remembers the day in 1998 she began working as township employee in West Brandywine after years of working for an insurance company.

“I was 40 years old,” she said in a letter to Common Pleas Judge William P. Mahon. “I didn’t have a clue as to how a township was run, but as I learned how to do my job I began to love my job. I thought, ‘This is the job I will have until I retire.’ I looked forward to going to work every day.”

But, as she described in the letter, which was read by a Chester County prosecutor during the sentencing proceeding for former West Brandywine Township Manager Ronald Rambo Jr., Pike’s boss, that feeling of job satisfaction changed over time as she realized just how the township was run.

Pike’s description of how Rambo, an employee for more than 30 years in the township and son of a longtime West Brandywine official, treated the township — and its finances — as his private, personal domain, echoed the statements of others during and after the Tuesday court hearing.

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“Mr. Rambo could pretty much do whatever he wanted and not have to worry about the consequences,” she wrote. He “is a bully and ran the township as though it was his.” When his improprieties were eventually called to the attention of the three-member elected Board of Supervisors, they turned their ire towards the whistleblowers who accused Rambo — Pike and the township auditors –—and let Rambo go without any disciplinary action.

Indeed, Assistant District Attorney Kevin Pierce, the prosecutor who led the case against Rambo in court, told Mahon at sentencing that the past supervisors’ “laissez faire” attitude towards Rambo’s administrative behavior had contributed to the atmosphere that made Rambo believe that he could essentially steal from the township and get away with it.

“Instead of looking out for everyone else, he was looking out for himself,” Pierce said on Thursday, two days after the sentencing. “He was supposed to be selfless, but he was selfish.”

Rambo, 60, of West Brandywine, was sentenced on Tuesday to two to 23 months in Chester County Prison on counts of forgery and theft. As such, he became the first municipal official — elected or appointed — to be sentenced to prison for criminal activity related to his or her position in recent county history.

Last week, those involved in the case as witnesses and observers reacted to Rambo’s behavior, his crimes, the atmosphere around him in the township, and his sentence. To those who bristled at Rambo’s behavior and the way it affected township government, the lesson learned that the harder they come, the harder they fall was apt.

“I think Ron Rambo got what he deserved,” said Supervisor Douglas Smith, who won election in November over then-incumbent Thomas McCaffrey, who had served on the board when Rambo’s crimes were committed. “As the judge said, it was an attack on our form of government. I agree with Judge Mahon completely.”

But McCaffrey, who served as a supervisor from 1992 until his defeat in the fall, said he felt otherwise, and that Rambo was being punished far worse than others who commit far more serious crimes. “Mr. Rambo made a mistake, and it was illegal, and he should be punished for it,” McCaffrey said in a telephone interview from his home in the township. “But I think he got a harsher deal he should have. I feel that all this crime involved was misdemeanors. The man dealt with millions of dollars (as manager). If he wanted to steal money, there were other ways he could have done it.”

Rambo was accused of submitting fraudulent documents for medical reimbursement claims to the township on four separate occasions. They involved doctor’s appointments and prescriptions for his two children, a dentist appointment, and pharmacy bills.

Township officials who testified at his trial in May acknowledged that the township had no formal policies or set procedures on how employees could claim reimbursement for such expenses, and McCaffrey, in explaining the situation on Thursday, allowed that he was of two minds as to whether Rambo had intended to defraud the township.

”I can see a person really being harried by his job,” the former supervisor said, noting that Rambo not only served as manager, but also as secretary-treasurer, codes enforcement officer, roads supervisor, and recycling coordinator. “There were so many things that he was doing. I think he just got behind in what hew as doing.”

But McCaffrey also said he could understand that Rambo might have felt slighted and bitter about being the fall guy for the supervisors, who made budget cuts and took otherwise unpopular steps over the years but laid it on Rambo’s doorstep to deliver the bad news.

“In your job, most people who see you are angry, and I think you can start to feel neglected,” he said. “He was the voice of the supervisors. Clearly it was wrong, what he did, but I think there was pressure form his job.”

In his defense, Rambo told Mahon that although he accepted responsibility for filing the fraudulent documents, he believed the matter should have stayed inside the township without resorting to a criminal investigation.

McCaffrey seemed to agree with that sentiment, saying that tax money spent on the investigation by county detectives could have gone to other, more worthwhile, projects.

He also said that rather than seeing Rambo sent to prison, he would have liked to have seen the defendant forced to pay a sizable sum of money to the township as punishment — 10 or more times the amount he was found to have stolen, about $400.

But Smith, a relative newcomer to the township who works as a emergency room nurse at Paoli Hospital, said he initially found Mahon’s sentence too lenient. “I was a little surprised he didn’t get more time,” he said Friday in an interview. After reflection, however, he felt Mahon had been fair. “I am happy with the way this has played out.”

Smith said that the past boards, including McCaffrey and current Supervisor Josef G. Obernier Sr., were so focused on not raising taxes they contributed to the circumstance that saw Rambo take on more power as he assumed more positions within the township. “It was more than just a laissez faire attitude. The supervisors did not address the situation when they were confronted with it, and fulfill their responsibility to the township. It was enabling.”

Pike, who continues to work as the finance administrator at the township, said that Rambo’s entitlement set him off from the other employees and led to earlier instances of misconduct overlooked by the supervisors. “It seemed the supervisors were OK with the fact that Mr. Rambo was taking taxpayer money. He was arrogant and belittling toward the staff,” she said in her letter to Mahon. “I honestly believe he thinks he didn’t do anything wrong. And that it was his right because he was in charge.

“This man took a position of trust and in turn betrayed the trust of the taxpayers,” she wrote.